Steve Ritchie Spearheads Papa John’s “Diversity Training”

As the CEO of Papa John’s, Steve Ritchie Papa John’s is very determined to change the course of the Pizza chain, which has been on the decline since early last year. One of Ritchie’s effort to redeem the image of the company from the slump is by doing a diversity training on its employees. Ritchie announced that the reason for this training is due to bad diversity practices which are uncovered during his investigation in all of its branches in the United States.

Daniela Galarza from Eater.com compared the Diversity Practices to what Starbucks did a couple of years ago to alleviate the backlash because of a commotion that happened to one of its Philadelphia branches. Steve Ritchie also made it clear that he has three priorities while he’s leading Papa John’s International, and those three are diversity, equity, and inclusion.

According to Steve Ritchie PapaJohn’s, the training that will be made is an “unconscious bias training” and everyone the company, including the executive employees, are going to participate. The training will also serve as a way to make the employees of Papa John’s have a better working relationship with each other. Ritchie also announced his plans to make the leadership team more diverse. Visit This Page for more information about Steve Ritchie.

Under Steve Ritchie’s leadership, the decline that happened from the first to third quarter of 2018 was alleviated in each quarter. According to QSR Magazine, the pizza chain started to recover in the last quarter last year due to the new marketing efforts released. Q1 get a -5.3 decline, Q2 got a -6.1 decline, the third quarter is the worst with -9.8 declines. During the last quarter of 2018, its sales started to bounce back, with a recorded decline of -7.3.

In addition to this, Papa John’s managed to secure funding worth $200 million with the help of Starboard Value LP. Half of this funding is planned to be used to finance its five strategic priorities: people, brand, value, technology, and unit economics. The other half of the funding will be used for financing the debt of the company. Because of this funding, Starboard’s CEO Jeffrey Smith has been added as the chairman of Papa John’s.